The Warriors’ Steph Curry sits on the bench during Monday’s loss to the Clippers in Game 2 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series in Oakland. To win three of the past four NBA titles and reach Game 7 in the NBA Finals of the other one, the Warriors have played 83 postseason games, an additional season’s worth of contests. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES — Often, the Warriors are accused of “flipping a switch” when they want to play like champions again. Actually, they’d like to flip off the switch and go to bed for a year or two.

Golden State has literally played five basketball seasons in the past four. To win three of the past four NBA titles and to go to Game 7 in the Finals of the other one, they have played 83 extra games. It is the longest stretch of spectacular winning the NBA has seen since the Celtics won every championship between 1959 and 1966, except the league was not a coast-to-coast proposition back then, and the public wasn’t waiting in the frontyard bushes every time the Celtics left the house. The line between exhilaration and obligation was smudged out long ago.

That might be why the Warriors lost by 26 to the Lakers on Dec. 25, or by 20 to Toronto on Dec. 12, or by 35 to Dallas on March 23, or by 23 to Milwaukee on Nov. 8. All were at home.

“This has been a long and challenging season,” Coach Steve Kerr said Thursday morning, as Golden State shot around. “A lot of things have come our way. This is part of trying to stay on top of the mountain. It’s a different type of journey.”

The Warriors led the Clippers by 23 at halftime and by 31 with 7:31 left in the third quarter. At that point, they had a composite 48-point lead through 76 minutes and 29 seconds of the first-round series.

They still led by 12 with 6:53 left in the fourth quarter. And, of course, they lost 135-131, a Wile E. Coyote pratfall from the highest peak in the valley.

Golden State turned it over seven times in the fourth quarter and shot 6 for 19 while the Clippers were shooting 15 for 24.

Kerr did not pretend that the outcome could be set aside, much less forgotten.

“It was a strange night, probably the strangest playoff game I can remember,” he said. “I haven’t seen our team in that position before.”

Was it the byproduct of the 82-game stare? Steph Curry said no.

“Thinking about it, looking at the film, I thought they played well,” Curry said. “You don’t come back from a 31-point deficit just because somebody handed you the game. They made shots, they made plays, they didn’t quit.

“For us, maybe you can highlight some things that could have stopped the bleeding. But we played six very good quarters, really six-and-a-half, before that. It was the perfect storm.”

This isn’t an easy spring for proponents of the regular season. The Tampa Bay Lightning became the third NHL team ever to win 62 games. It got them a nonstop flight to The Lake, after they were swept by Columbus in the first round. Afterward, Coach Jon Cooper bemoaned the lack of bumps in their road, the absence of tough times that might have introduced healthy doubt.

But top seeds in hockey always know they can lose because they play in a far more competitive league. In basketball, the first round is usually like stretching.

Top-seeded Chicago lost to Philadelphia in 2012 but only because league MVP Derrick Rose tore up his knee. The year before that, Memphis pulled an 8-vs-1 trick on San Antonio.

Older Warriors fans remember 2007, when Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson and Jason Richardson all shot 40 percent or better from the 3-point line and derailed the top-seeded Mavericks. These Warriors wore those ’07 uniforms in their final regular-season game at Oracle Arena earlier this month. In some ways that team got the fan base lubed up for the Splash Brothers of the next decade.

At some point, time catches up. The Warriors didn’t need for Demarcus Cousins to injure his quad and miss the rest of the postseason. They don’t have the Strength In Numbers that continue to decorate their T-shirts. They’re facing the possible departure of Kevin Durant in the summer. They don’t have Jerry West anymore, and the Clippers do. And if the Warriors get through this, they’ll probably have to deal with a Houston team that, at some point, has found religion in defense.

Clippers coach Doc Rivers was not fooled. He said he awakened Tuesday morning and was haunted because they trailed by 31.

At the very least the Clippers have made sure the Warriors will play more games, and thus will be forced to choose their metaphor: Flip the switch, or refill the tank.